
Gateway Cancelled?
Just before the New Year, the Federal Transportation Administration denied that a funding agreement made between Governors Christie and Cuomo of New Jersey and New York and the Federal government for covering the costs of new train tunnels between the two states ever existed. Though the FTA under the anti-transportation Trump regime alleges that such an agreement is ‘fake news,’ the Obama administration had indeed promised to pay for half of the Gateway project, with NJ and NY making up 25 percent each. Christie and Cuomo had made positive progress in recent weeks towards fulfilling their states’ costs. However, without major contributions from the Federal government, it will be hard to pay for the estimated $25 billion price tag.

This denial is par for the course for the Trump administration, which seems to be in a competition with itself to see whether it can make the country implode from the inside or be destroyed from the outside first. The Gateway Project encompasses infrastructure work that is vital not just to the economy of the New York Metropolitan region, but the entire country. Without two new tunnels under the Hudson River , NJ Transit and Amtrak train throughput will be cut from nearly 30 trains into and out of Penn Station per hour to just 8 overall, when one of the existing tunnels is inevitably closed for Sandy-related repairs.
I have little optimism that the current administration will come to whatever senses it has and agree to fund this vital project. Hopefully the existing tunnels (and all of us) survive the remainder of the Trump years.

Subway to Red Hook?
One of Governor Cuomo’s State of the State Proposals for 2018 is for the MTA to study transportation options for Red Hook Brooklyn, including the possibility of an underwater subway tunnel from Manhattan. For starters, building better transportation for Red Hook, one of the most transit starved neighborhoods in Brooklyn in spite of its relative closeness to job centers, is a great and long overdue idea. However, sending the MTA in the direction of an underwater subway tunnel from Lower Manhattan is silly for many reasons.
First, as a recent NY Times article described in great detail, the MTA pays more per subway track mile than any other transportation agency in the world by far. With Gateway tunnel proposals eclipsing $20 billion, an even longer tube from Manhattan to Brooklyn would be wildly expensive. Second, only 10,000 people live in Red Hook, which for its geographic size and by New York standards is small. The cost of building one subway stop there is just too high. Third, pairing a one stop subway line with massive commercial and residential development would eventually result in higher prices for thousands of public housing residents in the neighborhood and place more people and investments in a place that is particularly vulnerable to sea level rise.
Red Hook undoubtedly deserves better public transportation options. The neighborhood was condemned to isolation when the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel was constructed and not much has been done to right that wrong since. But, a new multi-billion dollar subway tunnel is not the answer. I don’t know exactly what that answer is but it could be along the lines of implementing real Bus Rapid Transit or even following through on the BQX light rail line. Indeed the MTA must focus on rehabilitating the assets it currently has rather than chasing the next gubernatorial pipe dream.

Bill de Blasio’s Expensive Bollards
In response to a number of hideous terrorist attacks carried out in Berlin, Nice and New York City, among others, that made use of civilian cars and trucks to kill, Mayor de Blasio proposed a $50 million roll-out of bollards intended to mitigate threats to busy pedestrian areas. Though measures to protect citizens from terrorist acts is an important job for city government, it can come at a great cost. That is literally true in this case. In a city where $2-4 billion only buys 1 mile of underground rail tracks, $50 million apparently will be spent on only 1,500 bollards at a cost of around $33,000 per bollard. As many in the transportation community have noted, this is a ridiculous sum for very simple infrastructural elements. Though they are advertised as bollards of a more decorative variety, under the guise of anything but counter terrorism, this would absolutely be cost prohibitive.
As bloggers like Second Avenue Sagas have noted on Twitter, the Mayor’s office should have taken a more critical look at the costs of this project, especially in the aftermath of the NY Times expose on the high costs of MTA work. Further, bollards are generally placed within the pedestrian space that it is meant to protect. Bollards impinge on pedestrian space but do nothing to slow or control the movement of vehicles that they protect the sidewalks from. When cities install bollards, they are choosing a bullet proof vest over gun control. Though bollards can be useful for protecting sidewalk space (and are certainly better than concrete slabs), for $50 million I would hope that the city would look at ways that car traffic can be managed and calmed for everyone’s safety, rather than resorting to boxing pedestrians in.